The Office Terrorist is the Office Terrified (poem)

After Following Orders journal entry 2

The office terrorist
Is the office terrified
Who handles her terror
By inflicting
Worse terror on the rest of us

All of us are ready for her
Primed by our childhoods

And she
If she did not exist
Would have to be invented

To perpetuate
To perpetrate

The kiss up kick down
Infantilizing
Agenda
Of
Burocracy
This burocrazy

The rigid society
Crunching and grinding
The flexible humans

She glares
She ostracizes
She campaigns
She belittles
She mocks
She talks about the rest of us
Behind our backs

To the boss
Who is her best friend
Making her the bbf
Bosses’ best friend

Everybody’s bad mother
She executes
The boss’ rage

They’re carrying out
Their revenges
On the slavemaster
On us

They are in it together
Like those partner serial killers

They take turns
Being the dominant abuser

So after the meeting
Where she finally heard us
Heard something
Our unanimity
A kind of intervention

The b
Sends
An email
Passive aggressive to the point
Of actual verbal violence

Since now I am no longer
Working top down
Why don’t you tell
Bbf
I’ve given up some of her power

Tell her yourselves
See if she kills you

So the b is bullied
By the master bully
And I’ve seen her bully
The bully

I am sick of the two of them
Riding their bullying
To a huge salary for the one
And for the other
a job beyond
The gates for which
She is credentialed

Not that I give a fuck there
Except that were she not the
Streetcorner schoolyard bully that she is
And the bbf
She’d never be running
This government agency
This burocrazy
Of structural confusion
Institutional incest
We’re the sister and the mother
Funder, and provider
Led by the b and the bbf
In the manner
Of the best poverty pimps

They keep me from my sleep
And from any sense of competence
They render all of us
Dysfunctional
Battered zombies
Stupefied and stupid
Fulfilling the prophecy
Of their contempt

We become the workers
They can get away with firing
We fall like dominoes

Why does the b
Enable these bloody fanged office predators
The serial sexual harasser
Was finally felled

The bully is a tougher case

This is what horror films are made of
This is what wars are made of
This is what heart conditions
And alcoholisms are made of

I’m waiting for the person
Who’s going to be pushed
Just far enough
To bring a gun

The saloon is ready for a shootout